Pre placement offers at IIT

The first flush of pre-placement offers (PPOs) now being handed out at India’s leading IITs are pointing to a coming bumper placement season this year. At IIT Bombay, job announcement forms submitted by companies are already double of what was seen at the same time (race against time phrase meaning) last year. The number of PPOs at other IITs is also rising, offering yet another piece of evidence of a resurgent job market.

Companies make pre-placement offers based on performance of candidates who have interned with them. Many companies like GoldmanSachs and RIL now use this route more, as it helps them gauge candidates better, over longer periods of time and in real work situations. Such internships at IITs end in August and the first PPOs are trickling in now. The flow will gather momentum by mid -September/October and will continue till December 1, when the campus placement season begins.

Facebook started its campus hiring this year by offering international posts to students of IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur. Although the social networking company has not disclosed salary details to the colleges, it is expected to offer at least $120,000, which was last year’s package. Microsoft has also rolled out PPOs at IITs, after offering Rs 79.5 lakh per annum pay packets for Redmond-based posts at non-IIT campuses recently. Deloitte is offering Rs 21.3 lakh for domestic profiles.

Others who have offered PPOs, include Schlumberger, Directi, Adobe, Reliance, Shell Technology, Cadbury, Qualcomm, DeutscheBank, Credit Suisse, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, HUL, ITC, Samsung, VMWare, Samsung Research, LinkedIn, VizExperts, Works Application, Goldman Sachs (Tech) Intuit, Futures First and P&G. The companies can come again for campus placements to hire more. Companies also use PPOs to get an early advantage in the war for talent at the placement season in campuses

Monday’s count of PPOs at IIT-Kharagpur shows 51 offers, said Sudhirkumar Barai, professor-in-charge, training and placement of the institute. Expecting a return of big hiring, IIT Madras and IIT Roorkee have made changes in their placement methods to fit in more companies. IIT Roorkee will introduce parallel slot system where three slots of six companies each will hold interviews on the first day.

IIT Madras will start their placements in ‘graveyard shifts’ from 12 at night to 7 am on December 1. This will be done to navigate international time zones and have international companies recruit via calls and Skype. IIT Madras has bagged 32 PPOs from Shell, Linkedin, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, HUL and Microsoft.

IIT Kanpur says a larger draw from startups and international posts will be on the cards this year and has already received 36 pre-placement offers compared with a total of 45 rolled out in 2013. The older IITs of Madras, Kanpur, Bombay, Kharagpur have an average of 1,000 students each registered for placements.

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